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Web Design
Introduction to Web Design
Web Page Layout
Page Width and Height
Navigation and Usability
Choosing a Color Scheme
Fonts and Font Sizes
Creating a Logo
Images and Icons
Using Templates
Testing in Multiple Browsers
Frequently Asked Questions
Further Information

Web Page Layout

Whatever the aim of your website, whether it's intended to sell products or services or to attract visitors through content, it's not going to be unique. There will always be other sites selling similar products or with similar content. Even if you did find something that genuinely doesn't exist at present, you can guarantee that as soon as you begin to be successful similar sites will spring up almost overnight.

There are several factors which will help differentiate your site from your competitors. Obviously the quality of your products or content is one, but the design of your site and the way in which information is presented to your visitors is another. If browsing your site is a pleasant experience, and your visitors can find what they're looking for quickly and easily, then they're much more likely to return.

So, before diving into the implementation, you should think carefully about how your site will look. You need to consider not just the main body or content, but all of the surrounding parts of the site, including logos, banners, menus, ad units etc.

If you browse through sites that you like and visit regularly, you'll see that there are a lot of similarities. Most sites follow the same basic layout, which might look something like this:

As you can see, this contains the following main elements:

• One or more ad units, assuming that the website is supported through advertising rather than entirely through sales, donations or some other mechanism.
• A banner and/or logo, which uniquely identify the site.
• One or more navigation menus, which may also include a search facility, to make it easy for visitors to find what they're looking for.
• The main content.

People often focus entirely on the last element, without thinking about the rest. If you're going to run a successful site though, you need to think about all of these. There's no point, for example, in including adverts if they're located in a position where nobody is ever going to see them (the counterbalance to this is that if they're too prominent they may well put people off). You also need to make sure that the site is easy to navigate (people won't come back if they can't find what they're looking for quickly and easily), and that your site is clearly identified through a banner and/or logo so that visitors remember the name.

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